Aftershock: Kincaid
by Cirocco
Summary: 'Aftershock', mostly from Claire Kincaid's point of view.
1. Execution

**CHAPTER 1: EXECUTION**

**Author's Notes:**

OK, I wasn't sure about doing this POV because as we all know, Claire's story ends rather abruptly.  While I am in no way adverse to writing angstfic, I usually like to end with some kind of semblance of a happy ending.

There's no happy or tidy ending here, unless you're a believer in the afterlife.  I'm not sure I am (being an agnostic, like Claire herself), but even if I were I wouldn't know how to write a chapter about Claire ascending to Heaven.  If your beliefs lean in that direction, by all means go ahead and imagine that as the last chapter.

**ooo000ooo**

"I'm going to plead Carson down to Aggravated Assault," Claire decided, looking over one of the case files she'd brought for the long drive to Attica.

"Sounds about right.  What does his lawyer think?" Jack asked, passing a large semi.

"He still thinks he can get off, but he hasn't taken a look at the witness."

"How is she?"

"Very credible."

"Put some pressure on him.  Let him know we're eager to go to trial and get the whole nine yards, Attempted Murder, Conspiracy, all of it."

"We don't have enough to convict on any of that," Claire pointed out.

"He doesn't know that."

"Full disclosure, Jack?  They know what we have and don't have."

"They also know you work with me," he grinned, eyes on the road.

"Does it make you happy to have a reputation as a prosecutor who withholds evidence?" she looked at his profile.

"As long as it doesn't get me disbarred and helps put criminals away, yes, it does."

"That's very funny, Jack.  I'd really like to make through the next few years without being called to testify about your ethics again."

"We got through it all right the last time, didn't we?"

"All's well that ends well?"  Jack shrugged.  She shook her head and moved on to another file.

"Enrique Gomez.  He tied up his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend, made him watch while he raped her, then made her watch while he crushed the boyfriend's head in with a lead pipe.  Then he tried to kill her with the pipe too.  The boyfriend is dead and she's suffered extensive brain damage, especially in her motor skills area.  Apparently she'll never walk normally or drive a car again.  She may never be able to hold down a job either.  They're asking for Man One, five to fifteen."

"Man One?" Jack's eyebrows climbed up.  "On what grounds?"

"They're claiming it was a crime of passion, that she was cheating on him."

"'The bitch had it coming to her?'"

"That's the essence of Mr. Gomez's defense."

"Wait, the Gomez case?  Isn't that the one where you had at least five witnesses who said she broke up with him months ago?  And he stalked her?"

"The very same.  Unfortunately, she also had sex with him twice, with no violence, during those four months.  She claims he forced her to by threatening to kill her boyfriend if she didn't, he claims it was consensual and proves that they were still involved."

"She said, he said," Jack concluded.  He ruminated for a moment.  "You know, you could tell them we're going for Murder One, because of the viciousness of the murder.  Call it a torture killing.  Threaten them with the death penalty, then offer life instead of death."

The death penalty.  Use it as a stick, and dangle life in prison as the carrot.  Claire shuddered.

"Isn't his attorney Joyce Glacken?" Claire mhm'd yes.  "She always pleads out.  She'll probably tell him to take life and run."

"Great, so justice is served because of a death threat and a bad public defender."

"Would you rather have him out to do it again?"

Claire ignored that.  "She also wants us to drop the sex charge.  He doesn't want to be a convicted rapist."

"He's concerned about his image?"

"He's done time before, five years for Ag Assault.  He knows what happens to rapists in prison."

"Good," Jack nodded with grim satisfaction.  "Maybe some day another inmate will say the same thing about him, 'the bitch had it coming to him'."

"I don't think he'll take the plea if we don't drop the rape charge.  Joyce said he's actually not that worried about his safety in prison, since the violence of the rape and the fact that he killed her boyfriend should earn him points.  But he still wants it dropped.  I think it has more to do with pride than concern for his safety."

"So he figures he'll be OK as a convicted rapist because he's a vicious convicted rapist, not a run-of-the-mill convicted rapist," Jack shook his head in disgust.

"Do you think it's worth a fight?  I'd rather just drop it and take the plea."

Jack thought for a minute.  "No.  You're right.  Go ahead.  Offer life without parole and drop the rape charge."

As they talked, Claire privately marveled at Jack's sang froid.  How could he be so calm about this?  He was sifting through cases like it was just any other day at the office.  The only difference was they were doing this in the car instead of over Chinese takeout at the office or one of their apartments.

I am not going to bring it up again.  It goes nowhere.

Nine o'clock.  Two and a half hours till Attica.  Three hours left of Mickey Scott's existence.

She took out another file.  "The Mandelay case, Kevin and Marisa."

"Bonnie and Clyde?"

"No, they're brother and sister.  Silverman wants leniency for the girl."

Jack tried to remember what he knew of the case.  "She'll be very sympathetic.  She's got no record."

"She held up a bodega, Jack."

"He'll argue that she was just along for the ride."

"Silverman's a pussycat.  I can take him," she said confidently.

"I happen to agree with him.  I don't think a jury would convict her.  Wasn't she on the honour roll?"

"You want me to take a lesser charge for her?"

"It's your call," Jack said dubiously.

"I want Man One for both.  She knew what she was doing."

"OK... if you think Silverman will go for it."  Jack looked at the clock on the dashboard.  "Do you mind driving?"

"No, of course not," he drove to the shoulder and they switched places.

"I'm think I'll try to nap a bit."  He leaned back and was soon dozing off.

Nine thirty.  Two and a half hours left till they killed Mickey Scott.

Claire glanced at Jack, peacefully asleep in the passenger seat.  How could he sleep?  How could he be so unaffected by this?

She wondered if he thought about Scott at all.  If he ever had any doubts.  He just seemed so... cold about this.  She felt like her heart was going to break, knowing that in a few hours a living, breathing, person was going to die at the hands of the State, and that she would be partially responsible for his death.  And it didn't bother Jack at all.  Jack was napping on his way to this State-sponsored murder.

It was absolutely chilling sometimes to be with a person who could be so passionate about some things and dispassionate about others.  When it came to the death penalty, he not only didn't feel what she felt; he didn't even react with compassion towards her feelings.  She had been almost in tears once, trying to express how wrong it was... and he'd just taken it as an interesting intellectual exercise.

The Paul Sandig case had been the worst.  The first capital case she'd ever worked on - the first one since New York got the death penalty.  She'd argued against asking for it, and he'd been coldly certain that it was the right thing to do.  His reasoning was practical and despicable.  The people were sick of crime, they needed a sense of control, they had a need for vengeance and if the State didn't want people to take vengeance themselves, they had to provide a legal means.

Which was despicable.  Plain and simple.  Jack felt that since the need for vengeance was a natural human instinct and it needed no apology.  Well, murderous rage was also a natural human instinct.  So were greed and prejudice and a host of other antisocial impulses.  Civilized beings still tried to keep a lid on them.  Just because something was a natural human instinct did not mean it should be indulged.

Ten o'clock.  Two hours left to Mickey Scott's life.

Vengeance.  What a horrible cause to champion.  She believed wholeheartedly that the death penalty was wrong because the State should not be reduced to the level of a murderer, but at least if there had been some other reasoning behind it she could have accepted Jack's position more easily.  If there were statistics that proved that the death penalty was any kind of a deterrent, or that it saved money that could better be used to improve society in other ways.  But there weren't.  It didn't reduce the crime rate and it actually cost the State money, money that could be better spent on actual crime prevention - literacy programs, drug counseling, prenatal care for low income babies.

Instead of pursuing those options, the State spent money fighting for vengeance.

A vengeance that was, moreover, arbitrary and unfair, as well as an awesome responsibility to place on the shoulders of those involved in the process.  Who were they to decide life and death?  Why would Paul Sandig and Mickey Scott die while other killers lived?  Theirs weren't bloodless crimes, but neither were they as heinous as some she'd seen.

For example, Enrique Gomez.  Why was he going to live?  Paul Sandig killed a police officer and probably regretted it with all his heart.  He had been an upstanding pillar of the community until he helped his employer launder money and then killed a cop. This other lunatic had brutally raped his girlfriend, to the point where she would probably never be normal again.  Claire winced as she remembered the medical report of the girl's internal injuries.  He'd tortured her and her boyfriend, forcing the boyfriend to watch, for the sadistic pleasure that gave him.  Then he'd beat the boyfriend's head in with a pipe, in front of the girl, so that she could watch.  Then he tried to kill her.  And he showed absolutely no remorse.  He was proud of the depravity of his crime, because it would earn him points in prison and because, as Jack had put it, the bitch had it coming to her.

And he would live.  A full lifetime.  Behind bars, but a full lifetime.

And what about Mickey Scott?  He had raped Adele Saunders and then he'd murdered her.  Just as horrifying as Gomez's crime, but only one victim.

Two lives destroyed by the first, one life by the second.

So why should Gomez live and Scott die?

Ten thirty.  One and a half hours to go.

Claire sighed.  Once again she asked herself why she was doing this.  Why was she driving to Attica?  Her presence wouldn't affect the execution in the slightest.  Why was she putting herself through this?

She let her mind wander a bit, thinking over what she'd talked about with Lennie Briscoe.  Lennie was also going to attend, with his partner Rey Curtis.  She had no idea why Curtis was going, but she and Lennie had talked about the execution at length one night when he'd come in to give her some information on another case.  Lennie was somewhat vague about his own reasoning, but Claire had gathered that he needed to make some kind of peace with the execution, and with his own stance towards the death penalty.  It had been so refreshing to talk to somebody who wasn't totally sure about it.  He wasn't entirely opposed, and he'd raised many of the same arguments Jack had, but she knew that in Lennie's case he was just playing devil's advocate, which Lennie did with some frequency.  When she'd questioned him on his opinion, he'd admitted he wasn't that big a fan of the death penalty either.

_I dunno, it just seems kinda wrong.  We put people away for popping other people.  Dunno why we think it's OK to kill if it's us doing the killing._

_Jack says that's because there's a good reason for it._

_Yeah, well, there's a reason for a lotta murders out there.  I've put people away for killing somebody who killed their kid, and that's just about the best reason there is.  We still put 'em away for it._

Lennie was a nice guy to work with.  She'd been uncomfortable with him when they first started working together - she a brand new prosecutor and he an experienced cop.  Her job often required that she give orders in the form of suggestions to the detectives who worked with her - question this guy, release that other one, pick that one up.  And it was a little intimidating to give orders to a man who was old enough to be her father and who knew far more about criminal investigations than she.

But she'd quickly grown fond of him.  He was somewhat abrasive, with a cynical manner and a sharp wit, and he didn't suffer fools gladly, but he was willing to do what she asked, willing to let her do her job.  He was a damn good detective.  And as long as she didn't do anything blatantly stupid, he was easy to get along with.

And he could see that the people they dealt with were people.  He was even able to treat them with compassion on occasion.  She was attracted to Jack's mind, his brilliance and his dedication, but often repelled by how little compassion he seemed to have.  The law was like a game to him, all black and white and winning and losing.  The human side of it seemed to escape him most of the time.  Lennie said he often felt the same way about his partner.

Curtis was a strange guy.  Claire often found herself wishing for Mike Logan, Lennie's previous partner, when she was in Curtis' presence.  Not that she didn't like Curtis, in fact she found him rather attractive, but he was so rigid and judgmental.  Very ethical in his own way and a very good detective, but he could so easily disregard some of the very things that she herself was the most passionate about, such as due process.  He did things by the book and didn't cut corners like Lennie and Jack often did, but only in those areas that he had decided were worth doing by the book.  Perjury was right out.  Bribery was right out.  Any kind of corruption was right out.

Areas where his rigid ethics didn't apply, he was reckless to the point of lunacy.  Roughing up suspects?  No problem.  Disregarding the chain of command?  No problem.

Violating the most fundamental right a person had, the right to live?  No problem.

She knew he was very devout, as she herself was not.  It baffled her.  How could a man believe in God and believe that life was sacred but not have a problem with taking another man's life?  It was beyond her.

**ooo000ooo**

The observation room was small, just two rows of people, ten witnesses in all.  They sat facing a curtain that covered the execution chamber.

She looked at Adele Saunders' parents, sitting in the front.  Mickey Scott's brother had come too, but his parents had declined to attend.  Scott's family had been completely uninvolved in the case; Claire only knew of them because she'd looked up everything she could about him when she found out Scott was going to be put to death.  Scott's family had apparently also been uninvolved in most of his life as well.  Claire wasn't sure if his brother was here to show support for Scott during his final moments, to make sure he was dead and would never trouble them again, or just out of ghoulish fascination at witnessing a death.  From what she'd learned about him, the latter two seemed more likely than the first.

Briscoe and Curtis were escorted in, Briscoe looking a little out of sorts and Curtis looking completely composed, as usual.  She felt a brief surge of gratitude for Briscoe's presence here, for making her feel a little less alone.  He might not be as appalled as she was by this whole procedure, but at least he wasn't out for blood like Jack and Curtis and probably just about everybody else in this room.

A man in a suit entered the room, cleared his throat, then spoke in a calm, quiet voice.

"Good evening ladies and gentlemen, my name is Philip Croisseaux and I am the Warden at Attica Prison.  I'd like to welcome you to our institution tonight."  He paused for a moment, calmly looking at each witness in turn.

"Mr. Scott will be brought into the room you are facing at approximately 11:50pm.  He will then be prepared for his execution and will be put to death by lethal injection in accordance with New York State law at midnight.  He will have the option to keep the curtain to this room open or closed.  He will also have the opportunity to say a few last words."

"You have all been given the chance to ask whatever questions you may have about the execution and Mr. Scott prior to these proceedings.  I would like to respectfully remind you all that this is a very solemn occasion and that your presence here is not mandatory or required by law.  Please allow us to do our jobs with a minimum of distraction and please allow Mr. Scott the dignity of a calm, efficient execution.  If any of you feel that you cannot do this, I would request that you leave the room now, out of respect for this institution, the family of Mr. Scott's victim, and Mr. Scott himself."

"Thank you ladies and gentlemen for your cooperation during these proceedings.  I would like to remind you that our chaplains will be here for a few hours tonight to provide spiritual support for any of you that wish to avail yourselves of their services."  He glanced down at his watch and flicked on a switch.  There was a slight hiss indicating that an intercom was open.

11:48 p.m.  Twelve minutes left.

Claire heard a sound from the intercom.  It sounded like a door was being opened, people were walking, and there was the sound of equipment being moved.  Probably the gurney that would hold Scott strapped in while he was being murdered.

"Heard you did pretty good," a voice said.

"Yeah.  Had the meatloaf and mash, coupla Dr. Peppers," that was Mickey Scott.  His voice sounded tense.

"I woulda gone with the pizza.  Sausage and peppers," the other voice said.

"Maybe I should start over," Scott said, and Claire winced.  There was a small pause.  "I bet you get a real kick out of that," Scott said, his voice strained.

"Now is not a good time to go crybaby, Mickey," the first voice said.

"Yeah, right, in your dreams," Scott sneered.  Claire breathed deeply.  No, Mickey Scott wouldn't go out crying.  He had too much pride.  He would keep his dignity, as far as he could.

The Warden had said they should allow Scott the dignity of a calm, efficient execution.  How could an execution be dignified?  It was a killing, plain and simple, and all of this careful pretense that what was happening was dignified was obscene.

The Warden left the observation room, and Claire heard the door to the execution chamber opening.

"You're sure about the priest?" the Warden's voice asked.

"I'm sure," Scott answered tightly.  Claire swallowed through the ache in her throat.  It was fitting that there would be no priest to give this horror an air of religious legitimacy, a seal of religious approval.

"How about the curtain?" the Warden asked.

"What about it?"

"It's your choice, Mr. Scott.  Open or closed?"

"What would you like?" Scott's voice challenged.  There was a slight pause.

"Closed."

"Then open the sucker up," Scott said contemptuously.  Of course Mickey Scott would say that.  He always went against whatever anybody in authority wanted him to do.  To Jack, that was part of what made him worthless.  To Claire, it was part of what made him a human being.

"Fine."

The curtain opened, and there he was.  Tied down, arms out, barefoot, no dignity there.  Living his last moments.  He looked up at all of them.

"Like damned fish in a barrel," he sneered at them.  Yes, they were.  Damned fish in a barrel, here to watch in ghoulish fascination while the State killed him.  Claire felt a pang of guilt.  Was she making his end worse by witnessing it?

"Want to say anything?"

"Do it."

Claire watched, her throat tightening as two men opened a panel and turned some dials.  It had begun.

The two men closed the panel and left the room.  Scott looked up at the lights.  He looked incredibly tense.  Claire wondered what it would be like to be facing your death.  Knowing that poison was about to run through your veins and end your existence.

Claire blinked, willing the tears out of her eyes.  A green light went on in the panel, then a yellow light.  Jack was staring straight ahead.  This man was about to die, and Jack was staring straight ahead, totally unaffected, as if he were watching krill mate on the Discovery Channel.

Scott was looking up at the ceiling.  Staring at the lights above him, the last thing he would ever see.  The heart monitor beeped steadily as Claire kept her eyes on Scott's face.  Of all the people here, she might be the only one who was thinking of Scott.  Of the man himself, depraved as he was, violent as he was.  He was still a human being who was about to meet his end in an act that was no less savage than his towards Adele Saunders just because it was cloaked in terms like 'justice' and 'humane'.

And then his eyes closed.  The beeps from the heart monitor became erratic, closer together, then turned into one long beep.  Claire gazed at Mickey Scott's dead face.

The State of New York had just committed murder.

The curtain closed.

**ooo000ooo**

"Ms. Kincaid?" out in the parking lot, Claire turned to face Margaret Saunders.  Mrs. Saunders had tears in her eyes, but her face looked set, satisfied.  "Ms. Kincaid, thank you so much for coming tonight."  Seamus Saunders, her husband, stood behind her, silent and grim.

"You're welcome," Claire said numbly, not sure what else to say.

"Mr. McCoy.  Thank you for making the trip out here.  I just - I just wanted to thank both of you for helping us so much.  You know, for, for helping to make sure he got what he deserved."

"You're welcome, ma'am," Jack said, his voice uncharacteristically gentle.

"Those two men that just left - they were the two detectives, weren't they?  They caught that man?"

"Yes ma'am," Claire said.

"It was kind of them to make the trip too.  I wanted to thank them too.  Please let them know we appreciate them coming," she paused.  "It's good to have this all done."

"Yes it is," Jack said.

"I feel like Adele's finally at peace," she said tremulously, then turned to her husband.  "Let's go, Seamus."  They slowly walked away.

**ooo000ooo**

Jack had offered to drive for the first little while and Claire had decided to sleep.  Feeling drained, impossibly sad and angry.  She couldn't do anything about Scott's death now - not that she'd been able to do anything about it before.  She had been unable to think of anything but the execution for the last several days, and now that it was over, she wanted to think of everything but.

OK.  Make a few notes in the files, then go to sleep.

Mandelay: _Man One for both, no deals._

Gomez: _Murder Two, life w/o parole.  Drop rape charge._   Oh - she found a sticky note that had been hidden behind an ME's report - _change name on charge, Gomez is an alias, real name Gonzalez_.  Very imaginative.  Reminded her of a drug dealer and murderer whose real name was James Murch and whose alias was James March.  Nobody said criminals had to be creative.

Carson: _Aggravated Assault.  Say we're eager to go to trial._

Another file that she hadn't even bothered to bring up with Jack, Cloris Simmons: _Man One, five to fifteen._  David would put up a token resistance and remind her that she had no physical evidence, and she would remind him that Cloris Simmons had stopped just short of publishing a newsletter about killing her husband and that hearsay heard by six separate people would probably go a long way towards convicting her.  And that Man One was a very generous offer, considering the fact that there was no physical evidence of the spousal abuse Simmons claimed as defense for her crime.

She lay her head back and closed her eyes.

**ooo000ooo**

"Claire," Jack was saying her name, gently shaking her awake.  "Do you mind taking over?"

"M-hm," she blinked.  "Where are we?"

"At a truck stop.  We passed Kingston a little while ago."

"That's - we're almost home, Jack, why didn't you wake me up before?"

"I was fine.  You looked like you needed your rest.  Why don't we go in, use the washrooms, you can get a coffee or something."

She yawned and got out of the car, stretching.  It was chilly out here.  What time was it?  Almost five o'clock.  The sky looked like it was starting to lighten up near the horizon, but that could just be the lights from a small town, it was hard to tell.

**ooo000ooo**

Compassion.  She was driving along the I-87, thinking about compassion.  So much of what she felt about the death penalty had to do with compassion, with the feeling that people were supposed to have for one another.  After working in the criminal justice system for the last few years she was no longer under any illusion that it was a universal emotion, but it should be.

We should not lower ourselves to the level of the people we prosecute.  As individuals, people commit crimes because they lack compassion for their victims.  Because when they commit their crime, they have no sympathy for their victim, because they feel that their own self-interest is more important than the well-being or the life of another human being.

As a society, when we execute a person, we do the same thing.  We decide that our societal need for revenge, or, if we can't do math, our societal need to save money by not paying for life in prison, is more important than that person's very life.  We show lack of compassion when we kill.

But what good is compassion, really?  Jack didn't feel compassion most of the time.  He did good work though.  He put people away.  He didn't feel much compassion for the victims whose rights he championed so zealously, but she knew they were better served by his brilliance and dedication than by any other prosecutor's compassion.  Cold as he was when it came to feeling for others, he made the world a better place.

She mentally reprimanded herself.  She was skewing her perceptions of Jack because of her conflict with him, she knew that.  He wasn't the cold unfeeling game-player she was painting in her mind.

She recalled a case they'd had a few months ago.  Lonnie Rickman, a thirteen-year old boy.  Shot a woman in her bed by accident, while trying to shoot his friend on the orders of a drug dealer who 'owned' him.  Jack had pushed and pushed to have the boy tried as an adult, showing no sympathy for him whatsoever.  Until at one point he'd finally come to grips with the fact that the boy had been driven to be what he was, behave in the way he did.

"Thirteen years old and living in a madhouse, what would any of us do?" he'd asked rhetorically.

As they had discussed the probable ending of the case with Adam, at one point he'd said, frustrated and angry, "So we throw in the towel.  Ross Morales goes home, Cassie Rickman stays on crack, and her kid spends the next twenty-five years in a cell.  Is _everybody happy?_**"**

"Didn't you say that's where he belongs?" Adam had asked.

"That must have been some other arrogant, moralistic, son of a bitch," Jack had said ruefully, and she had smiled.  He was always so convinced he was right, but then every so often he'd come smack up against the fact that he wasn't perfect and he had the grace to admit it.  Admit it, laugh at himself and reverse himself completely.  Pursue his new goal with as much zeal as he had pursued his old one, as he'd pursued the goal of saving Lonnie Rickman as best he could.  With sympathy and compassion.

Compassion.  Why was it necessary?  She felt compassion for Scott, but did this feeling do anything for him?  She didn't stop his execution.  She didn't even help it go any easier.  She was thinking of him, feeling for him as he died, and what did that get him?  Nothing.  Like damn fish in a barrel, he'd said of the people witnessing his execution.  And she'd been one of them.

And what about Adele Saunders' parents?  Where was her compassion for them?  Execution did give them a sense of closure, a sense that would never be served by Scott spending life behind bars.

One hour to go till New York.  Dawn peering over the horizon.  It was so nice out here, so peaceful.

Scott never would have seen any of this again.  He would have lived his life in prison.  Was that better than death?  Was it more compassionate to force that on him?  Maybe there was a good reason why he'd kept his lawyers from making any appeals.  He'd probably wanted to die.  Who was she to deny him that?

She blew her breath out with impatience.  Spending so much time with Jack was making her doubt her own convictions.  He had an answer for everything, but always from the point of view of legal technicalities or practical considerations.  There was no higher standard for him, no ethical goal.  It was all fine print or necessity.

Murder was wrong.  Period.  There had to be some kind of line that was inviolable.  Somewhere where the State said, this is our limit and we don't go past it.  If the Saunders family wanted closure, there were ways to get it other than committing murder.  If Scott wanted to die, he didn't need to make the State an accomplice in his own suicide.

So where did that leave her?  Where did it leave her, a compassionate accomplice to Scott's execution?

**ooo000ooo**

New York City traffic at 7:30am on a weekday morning.  Not the best place to have a little heart to heart with Jack.  He'd woken up and made some comment about a case and she'd immediately felt impatient with him.  That's all he could think about.  A case.  That was probably all he'd thought about while he was driving too.  Not Scott.  Not justice.  Just work, work, work.

"Is that really all that goes on in your head, Jack?"

"I beg your pardon?" he'd looked up from the file on his lap.

"Just work?  Cases?  Who to plead out, who to push to the wall?"

"What else should be going on in my head?"

Claire blew out her breath in frustration.

"Mickey Scott?"

"We saw him die, Jack.  Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"Yes," Jack nodded, "He's dead.  That case is very much closed."  Jack put the file away and there was a long, uncomfortable pause as they stared out at the cars clogging the street.  "Tell you what, they should ban cars in Manhattan," Jack commented.  "What, no witty response?" he asked after a beat.

"You leave me speechless," she told him dryly.

"Nobody forced you to watch it," he said quietly.

"I can't imagine what it must be like, staring at a clock, knowing the exact moment-"

"Adele Saunders thought she was going to work.  She ended up dead, your pity's misplaced," Jack repeated the same thing he'd been saying all along.  As if she hadn't been part of the trial, as if she hadn't known exactly what kind of monster Mickey Scott was.  As if that made any difference.

"I'm tired of arguing, Jack."

"Good."

"You know, I'm not feeling too well."

"Must be the flu," he commented.

"Yeah, the flu."  The 'I can't believe I work with, let alone sleep with, a man who has no problem with having another man put to death' flu.

"Wanna take the day?" Jack asked her.  She was startled.  Jack, suggesting taking time off work?  Unheard of.  It sounded great.  Unfortunately...

"No, I've got Silverman."

"Cover?"

Claire looked at him in surprise.  "You sure?"  Jack doing simple plea bargains?  Jack nodded.  Wow.  "OK, fine, I'll drop you off at the office."

"No problem," Jack said, and got out of the car.

"You've got Schwinger," Claire reminded him.

"She'll wait.  I'll take a cab.  Maybe you'll feel better," they gazed at each other for a moment, words hanging unspoken between them.  Jack was sweet when he worried about her.  Maybe she would feel better if she just took a little time off.

Yeah, right.

"I'll call you later," Jack said finally, and walked off.

**ooo000ooo**

She found herself at a coffee shop and suddenly remembered that Jack didn't have her case notes for the Silverman meeting.  No, that was OK, he'd remember what they talked about.  There was just Mandelay, Carson and Simmons today with Silverman, Gomez was tomorrow with Joyce Glacken.  Oh - she hadn't talked to Jack about Simmons.

She suddenly realized she really didn't care.  Let Jack plead whatever he wanted with Simmons.  Let Jack spend his time working on the day that he watched a human being die.

She let her mind drift, thinking about the Lonnie Rickman case, thinking of how she'd hung onto that glimpse of humanity as she hung onto so many other glimpses from Jack.  She'd hung on to it as she'd hung onto the occasional professional compliments he paid her when she first started working with him and she was afraid that he just wanted to get into her pants.  As she'd guiltily hung onto occasional personal compliments when she felt herself beginning to get interested in him and feared that she'd permanently set their relationship into a professional mode when they'd first met.

She remembered when they first started working together, the Dr. Haas case.  She had gone into her first meeting with him with some trepidation.  She was excited to still be working with an EADA, having gotten used to the status and level of work expected of an ADA assisting an EADA, but she was wary of his history with his assistants.

"Your reputation precedes you," he'd said.

"As does yours," she'd replied, and she'd confronted him with his record.  She expected him to sidestep, expected 'dirty old man' sleaze - what had she expected?

In any case, it didn't happen.  He told her bluntly that those relationships were mutual, that he felt no need to apologize for them, and that he didn't anticipate a problem working with her.

Excuse me?

No, she didn't want him harassing her.  But 'didn't anticipate a problem'?  What was that supposed to mean?

He'd been a good boss from the beginning, treating her well, not like a showpiece or an appendage or an errand girl.  Not that Ben Stone had ever treated her that way, but Ben had been her boss when she first came to the DA's office.  Ben had treated her with gentlemanly respect, but had not gotten to know her as a seasoned lawyer.  She was still very much his assistant by the time he left, somebody he'd coached through the 'baby lawyer' years.  Ben had been like the parent of a grown child who still sometimes treats that child as a child instead of a fellow adult.

Jack had requested her for her reputation, and accorded her the respect due to that.  Yes, she was his assistant and he had the last word, but he didn't mind if she argued with him on the way to that last word.  And she had a great deal of influence on what that last word would be.

And he showed her respect.  Or, what passed for respect with Jack, since he was forthright and not deferent to anybody, not even Adam Schiff.  He was no Ben Stone, consummate gentleman, but then, Ben Stone was no Jack McCoy.  Ben was all dedicated ethics and earnestness.  Jack was crafty brilliance.  Ben was polite, gentle, kind.  Jack was scathing and sarcastic when he disagreed with her, but that was challenging and attractive in its own way.

And he flirted with her, as Ben never would have dreamed of doing.  Subtly at first, handing out casual compliments about her appearance in the same tone he handed out casual compliments about her work - and about as frequently too.

"Claire, I heard you got Oliphant to accept Conspiracy to Commit.  Good work," pause, "Your hair looks good like that."

"Claire, why don't you draft the closing argument?  You seem to have a better feel for this jury than I do.  By the way what's that perfume?  It goes well on you."

Then one day he took her out to dinner and made his move.  They were both starting to stray into flirtation more and more, and she was starting to feel like a schoolgirl with a crush on an older man, chiding herself that she shouldn't indulge it because of his history, and because of her own with Judge Joel Thayer.  Halfway through the entrees Jack had put his fork down and gazed at her speculatively.

"Claire, don't be shy about telling me to go to hell."

"About what?"

He'd put his hand on hers, very lightly, barely touching, ready to move away at the first sign of discomfort from her.  "I'm getting the feeling that there's more than a coworker relationship going on here.  From my side, definitely.  What about from yours?"

"Uh-" she had stared into his serious eyes, totally flustered.  Seen a twinkle in them.  "Uh... Jack," she'd paused.  Well, that was intelligent.  OK.  She'd gathered her thoughts.  There were about a million excellent reasons to not let this go anywhere, and only one to let it develop: the fact that she was attracted to him.  And that wasn't good enough.  "Uh... maybe there is something, but..."

"But you don't want to pursue it."

She'd slowly shaken her head.

"Forget I mentioned it, then," he'd instantly segued into a case, so quickly she'd been a little taken aback.

"That's it?"

"Oh, I had a case on the ready in case you put me off.  Gets over the initial awkwardness."

She'd had to laugh.  "Yes, it does."

Weeks later, they'd ended up at another restaurant, and she'd brought it up.  And he'd been completely casual, but she'd caught the dilation of his pupils, the raising of his eyebrows, the pleased smile on his face.  And she was hooked.

But now...

What she and Jack had was exhilarating, exciting, but draining.  Working and sleeping together: it could be heaven and it could be hell.  For the last few weeks, as the subject of Mickey Scott had come up more and more frequently, as she felt more and more dissatisfied and conflicted about her role in the execution, her career, and her life, it had been hell.

All right.  No more coffee and ruminations.  Today was her day off.  She might as well do something with it.

**ooo000ooo**

A good run.  There was a certain soothing quality to it, a pounding rhythmic distraction.  She felt the pleasant burn of her muscles, another distraction.  It was almost impossible to keep any serious thought in her mind through the rhythm, so she thought of song lyrics instead.

"Hey, nice pace, what is it, a ten minute mile?" another jogger caught up with her.

"I don't keep track."

"Feels pretty good.  Maybe nine and a half.  You going the whole loop?"

"Yeah, if I'm still alive after Heartbreak."

"Mind if I use you as a rabbit?"

"Heh, be my guest," she thought fleetingly that the guy looked a little too tired to be able to keep her pace, but what the heck.  If he wanted to push himself, she could respect that.

"So, you an actress or a student?"

"'Scuse me?"

"Well, you're running in the middle of the day.  You look too smart to be unemployed."

Oh, great, a running pass.  Just what she needed today.  "I'm an attorney."

"Oh, lucky you.  Chauffeured around town in limos, fancy lunches..."

Claire briefly thought about her small apartment and equally small car.  Sure.  Limos.  If she'd gone into defense, maybe.  "Yeah, some life."

"So what if everyone hates you, tell 'em to go to hell, that's what I'd say.  You know, it's so funny, I thought once about going to law school once, but then I figured, three years, life's too short, you know what I mean?"  Having heard enough, Claire picked up the pace.  Creep.  "Eh... lesbo..." she heard him gasp behind her.

Great.

Now what?

She continued her run, but her heart wasn't really in it.  What a jerk.  Ruining her 'alone time' with his awkward fumbling come-on.

Maybe being alone wasn't the answer.  Maybe talking this out was.  There was no way to talk it out with Jack, since Jack was part of the problem.  She had talked it out and over and through and through with him, and she was sick of it.  This wasn't an intellectual exercise to her.  It wasn't a theoretical discussion.  It had to do with ethics and feelings and soul-searching and about a dozen other subjects that just weren't Jack's forte.

It had to do with the fact that she didn't know what she was doing with her life any more.  And Jack didn't get it.

But who else was there?  That was the other problem with working and sleeping with somebody as work-obsessed as Jack when she was pretty work-obsessed herself.  There really wasn't anybody else in her life.  She hadn't spent time with anybody other than Jack in weeks, probably.  She guiltily thought of her old college friend Marian Adams, who had been in town for a week a while ago but whom she'd completely missed because of the Taggart case.  And Margot Bell, who had been bugging her to get together for coffee or racquetball for weeks now.

Margot.  Maybe she could give Margot a call.

**ooo000ooo**

"Hello, this is Margot Bell at 555-3498.  Please leave a message after the tone."

"Hi, Margot, it's Claire.  I was just calling to say hi.  I'm uh, I've got the day off, if you'd like to get together at some point for lunch or drinks or something.  Give me a call.  Bye."

So much for that.  Well, that had been a long shot.  Margot was usually pretty busy too.

She thought of her mother, who had been bothering her to come for dinner more often lately.  Immediately felt a little guilty about it.  Her mother wasn't bothering her, not unless you counted calling every few months and leaving a polite message inviting her to dinner 'bothering'.

The problem was that she and her mother really didn't have all that much to talk about.  She didn't relate well to her.  Her mother was mostly concerned with redecorating her home and playing canasta and gardening.  And things had been somewhat strained between them for years, ever since she'd had that affair with Judge Thayer.  Her mother had made no bones about her disapproval of the relationship, and it had angered Claire that her disapproval had more to do with 'what will people think' than anything else.

She got along better with Mac Geller, her stepfather, than her mother.  At least she and Mac could fall back on legal discussions and reminiscences of her law school days, back when he was still teaching at Harvard.

Mac.  Now that was an idea.  Mac had argued eloquently and persuasively against the death penalty years ago at Harvard. Some of his articles had been required reading in 'Studies in Legal Ethics', a course of his that she'd taken.  She and Mac had also had numerous discussions over the years about legal issues, the role of the law and lawyers in society, and how lawyers figured out how to live with their jobs.  The very things she needed to work out now.

She would go see Mac.


	2. Aftershock

**CHAPTER 2: AFTERSHOCK**

Claire entered the classroom where Mac was finishing his class.

"How is it possible that the Idler case upheld the statute, while the Bannen case had the exact opposite holding?" Mac asked the class.  Claire found a seat at the back, smiling in recognition of Mac's question.  "Miss... Stadler?" Mac picked one of the students in the front row.

"Um, in Idler, the plaintiffs sued as a class?"

"Ah.  So hundreds of people were ripped off.  Irrelevant.  Guess again, Miss Stadler," Mac said witheringly.

The poor hapless student made another lame guess that Claire couldn't hear.  Mac looked away from her in mild disdain, then stepped down off the stage, approaching the girl.

"Take out your case book.  Look at the first page on Idler, Miss Stadler and tell me why the holding is exactly the opposite to that in Bannen," he stood before the young woman, who, Claire reflected, probably strongly resembled a deer in the headlights as she stared up at him.  "The answer is not on my forehead, Miss Stadler, look at the damn book."  Such vintage Mac.  He was so abrasive as a professor.  As a person too, but his manner often hid a sensitive, caring heart.

"I'm, I'm sorry, I - I don't know what you're looking for," the poor girl admitted.

"Because Bannen was written by Renquist," Claire mouthed the words along with him.  Good old Mac, still enthusiastically intimidating students after twenty-five years.  "People, the law is written by human beings.  Some with less grey matter than others," he glanced at the girl significantly.  "Remember that."  The class concluded and the students filed out.  Claire stood and approached Mac.

"Here for a refresher?" he asked her.

"Some things never change.  You pulled that Renquist thing on me."  That poor student was probably going to kick herself for days, and definitely never sit in the front row again.

"And you never read a case the same way after that," Mac replied with satisfaction.

"I never dared to!"

"Proving once again that fear is an excellent motivator," Mac said smugly.

"I still don't think that's what Socrates had in mind."

"That's exactly what he had in mind."

"Well he never had to set foot in a courtroom."

"Ah, but if he did-" Mac began.

"He'd be totally unprepared," she interrupted him.  Law school.  Harvard hadn't taught her a damn thing about what being a lawyer was all about, and Mac had told her enough about his current school that she knew it was just more of the same.  "Look what goes on here, Mac.  The school teaches contracts without ever showing a contract to the students.  Civil procedure, nobody ever shows us a complaint, or answer..."

"That's because it's a law school, not a lawyer school."

"Always a snappy answer at the ready," Claire commented, and he chuckled.  Mac was a lot like Jack in that respect.

They left the building and started walking towards Mac's office.  It was so nice out here, the trees on campus blossoming, a late-spring/early-summer breeze ruffling her hair.  Claire breathed in deeply, glad that she wasn't stuck doing research or slaving away at some case on this beautiful day.  Today was a day to be alive, experiencing life and the world around you.  Not shoving the world away in the fruitless pursuit of ephemeral justice.

Not being put into the ground after being executed in the wee hours of the morning.

"So what brings you to our fair campus today, Claire?"

Claire shrugged.  "I'm not sure," she said.  "Hey, can't a girl come and see her old professor just to say hi?"

"How's work?" Mac asked, ignoring her attempt at levity.

"It's there," she said evasively.  Not that she was here, she didn't know quite how to begin to talk to Mac.  There was so much to talk about.

"I ask again, then, Counselor, how's work?"

"It's... it's not much like what I expected when I was in your class."  She thought for a minute of the unfortunate Miss Stadler.  She had no idea what she was in for.  "The bottom line is, we walk out of here, we have no idea what we're walking into."

"You have a mind that actually functions," Mac pointed out.

"I'm just saying there's a lot more to the profession than reading Law Review articles."

"You don't like trial work, you can always write wills, do house closings..."

"Or teach."

Mac laughed.  "Touché!"

Claire hesitated.  "It's a juggling act.  Pragmatism... idealism... cynicism," she paused for a moment.  "I'm thinking about quitting."

"Oh bravo, another disillusioned member of the bar.  Take a ticket, Claire, there's a hell of a line ahead of you," he said over his shoulder as they entered his building.  "What's the trouble?  Weary of contemplating the lavish lifestyles of defense lawyers from afar?  Do I sense covetousness for the finer things of life?"  They smiled at each other.  Mac knew her too well for that.  Envious though she might be for the finer things that a defense lawyer could afford, she hadn't gone into law for the money.

"So what is it?  Tired of seeing criminals evade justice?"

"Sometimes," Claire admitted.

Mac paused on his way into the main office.  "Claire... I hope you don't want me to give you a pep talk on the importance of representing The People of the State of New York."  Claire smiled again.

"No, I don't need a pep talk.  You were never very good at pep."

"A lack in my character of which I am exceedingly proud.  Pep is for cheerleaders.  Excuse me for a moment," Mac went to get his mail and hand some papers in to a secretary for photocopying or filing.  Claire looked around the law school's main office.  Right in the middle, in terms of décor, from the offices where she spent most of her time.  The 27th Precinct had not been designed with aesthetics or ergonomics in mind, and Jack and Adam's offices... they might be civil servants, but they rated fairly respectable surroundings nonetheless.  Mac rejoined her and motioned her out the door.

"I was up at Attica today, Mac," she began as they entered Mac's office.

"That was damned stupid," he commented, shutting the door behind them.  Typical, challenging, Mac.

"I was part of it.  I had an obligation."

"And you want me to say that it's all right?"

"No, of course not!"

"Well it is," Mac stated calmly, sitting down.

Claire felt like he'd thrown a glass of water in her face.  Mac?  Mac Geller saying an execution was OK?  "Wow," she said after a stunned moment.  She sat down.

"You're surprised?"

That was putting it rather mildly.  "I guess not all your lectures stayed the same."

"The law must be stable but should never stand still.  It's not an absolute, it's not like physics," he pointed out.  He'd used the same words so many times to explain away changes in the law towards abortion, women's rights, civil rights, segregation, and, when she was in his class, environmental protection and gay rights.  This - using the same words to excuse changing the law to make it legal for the justice system to take a life...

"But State-sanctioned killing?"

"It's the penicillin of the nineties."

Claire felt ill.  "You shoulda been an ad man, Mac," she said bitterly.  Was everybody just an old cynic now?  Is that what was fashionable among lawyers these days?

"I am.  What do you think the law is, anyway?"

"A way of bringing order to the chaos."

"It's society's way of slapping itself on the back.  Look what a great job we're doing, look how civilized we've become," he said derisively.

She was repelled.  Mac Geller, who used to teach about legal ethics and the beauty of the law, cynically proclaiming it to be nothing more than an exercise in self-delusion.  "There has to be some exactitude, Mac!  Taking a life is wrong.  Period."

"Well, you can fool yourself, but you can't fool me.  You didn't go up there out of obligation.  You went up there to show off your sense of moral superiority."

Suddenly she was angry.  Angry and incredibly sad.  How dare he dismiss everything she was feeling, everything she was struggling with, as mere posturing.  "It's not superiority.  It's conviction.  What happened this morning is gonna stick with me for the rest of my life. And since when is conviction a character flaw?" she flung at him, sensing her throat constricting and her eyes filling with useless tears.

"When it turns into self-congratulatory depression," he returned calmly, crushingly.  "You can quit the profession, Claire.  You just can't quit the human race."

"Thanks, Mac."  This was going nowhere.  This was worse than arguing with Jack.  She stood up to leave.

"Claire?"

"Yes?" she turned around impatiently.

"You know your mother would like you to come by one of these days for dinner," he said gently.

She nodded, not trusting herself to say anything, and left.

**ooo000ooo**

Mac gazed at the door as it closed behind Claire.  Standard modus operandi for them.  He had always had a somewhat conflictive, though positive, relationship with Claire, both as teacher and stepfather, and their conversations often ended with her leaving the room in disgust.  But she always came back to him afterwards and showed that she had thought about what they had talked about, that it made her grow.

But maybe he'd been too harsh with her.  He'd heard about the execution, knew that Claire had been involved, and wondered if she would attend.  Claire was young, idealistic, passionate, and the execution had apparently affected her deeply, as anybody who knew Claire would have known it would.  Mac could have told her that going to see it would be a bad idea.

Should he have let her get away with her histrionics, just this once?

He mentally shook himself.  No, of course not.  Claire wasn't a child.  She was a bright young woman who needed to be shaken up a little bit when she let her emotions get the better of her.  So she'd gone to the execution and seen a man die.  How was that any worse than seeing the aftermath of the many murders that she had prosecuted?

She'd said this would be with her for the rest of her life.  Claire sometimes overstated the facts in her zeal to express herself.  She was immersing herself in self-pity, according the event more of an emotional impact than it deserved.

Mickey Scott had died today.  That was inescapable fact.  He would have died whether Claire was there or not.  That was inescapable fact as well.  Claire felt that she had an obligation to see the end of the sentence, and that was fine, but she had to understand that attending an execution should not be seen as an excuse to wallow in useless moral hand-wringing.  It was self-indulgence, and Claire was better than that.

**ooo000ooo**

Claire paused outside of Mac's building.  Her mother would like her to come by for dinner.  For what purpose, exactly?  So that her mother could wax poetic about her new drapes and Mac could attack her principles again?

She looked at her watch.  Early afternoon.  Well, this had been a waste of time.  Of all the times that she and Mac had had good talks, challenging talks, resulting in growth, this... this had been a dismal failure.  She felt even more let down than before.

She also felt deeply disturbed.  Could there be a grain of truth to Mac's cynical words?  Could it be that she wasn't disturbed about the morality of the execution and the end of Scott's life, but only about how that affected her?

She felt responsible for Scott's death.  What did that mean, exactly?  Did she have a right to go off and feel sorry for herself for the rest of the day?  At what point did her moral soul-searching become a mere indulgence, or, as Mac had called it, self-congratulatory depression?

Did she feel morally superior to the rest of the people there today, the rest of the people involved in Scott's case?  She recalled her feelings of impatience towards Jack, napping on his way to the execution.  She recalled her relief that Lennie was there too, at least unsure about the process and not out for blood like Jack and Curtis and everybody else in the room.

Who was she to feel morally superior to any of them?  She thought she was the only one feeling for Scott... but was she?  How could she know what was going on in Jack's mind, Lennie's, Curtis'... Scott's brother's?

For that matter... what did that mean, 'feeling for' Mickey Scott?  Did she even know enough about Scott to be able to think of him, feel for him?

She recalled wondering why Scott hadn't made his lawyers fight his death sentence.  She didn't know why.  She had no idea.  Why not?

Well, because she hadn't asked.

And why hadn't she asked?

Because it would have been inappropriate.  She was a prosecutor and he was a convicted felon that she had helped to convict.  It wasn't appropriate for her to go to him and ask him, So, Mr. Scott, tell me, why aren't you fighting your sentence?

It wasn't the done thing.

What did that matter?  When the stake was a man's life, what did 'the done thing' matter?  If she really felt such sympathy and compassion for Scott, shouldn't she have gone to see him, asked him?  Not hidden behind concerns about impropriety?  Maybe if she'd asked, she might have found some way to get the appeals process started.  Delayed his execution.  Possibly even saved his life.

She sighed.  This was what always happened when she came to see Mac.  She wound up questioning herself.  Normally it was disturbing but challenging, invigorating.  Not today.  Maybe today what she needed was not challenge, but sympathy.  But where could sympathy be found?

**ooo000ooo**

Well, a diner might not offer sympathy but it could at least offer sustenance.  She picked up a magazine somebody had left behind - Vogue, something she would no doubt completely forget two seconds after she finished reading it - and ate a light lunch, skimming through the articles.  The diner was surprisingly empty for early afternoon, and she was seated close to a television set that was tuned to a local station.  All of a sudden she looked up at the sound of a familiar voice.

"Mickey Scott was declared dead at 12:22 am Eastern Standard Time.  The cause of death was cardiac arrest caused by lethal injection," Adam Schiff was saying.  There was a din of reporters shouting questions.  Adam pointed to one of them

"What's going to happen to the body?" he asked.

"The family has 24 hours to claim it.  If they don't, it'll be buried at State expense," Claire reflected that it would be very surprising if anybody in Scott's family claimed the body.  If they didn't go to see him die, they wouldn't want the expense of seeing him buried.  Adam had moved on to another reporter, a woman.

"Mr. Schiff, isn't it true when you were in private practice you wrote an amicus brief against the death penalty?" she asked.  Claire remembered it well.  She had read it during the Paul Sandig case, when Adam was agonizing over whether or not to seek the death penalty for Sandig.

"That was twenty-five years ago," Adam answered evasively.

"And you've since changed your mind?"

"The people changed theirs.  Thank you," he left the podium.

Claire turned away from the TV and finished her sandwich.  The people changed theirs.  And that made it OK.  She'd read his amicus brief, and it had surprised her to read Adam, cynical, 'make a deal' Adam, arguing so passionately about the injustice of the death penalty, the ethical necessity for the State to never, ever take a life and turn itself into a murderer.

And now this.  'The people changed theirs'.

She knew Adam had been conflicted about asking for the death penalty in the Sandig case.  She'd never seen Adam like that before, his weary curmudgeon's face unsure and hesitant, he who was so quick to make pronouncements and decisions.  She'd wondered how he would feel when Sandig finally did face the needle, if that moment ever came, what with the lengthy processes of appeals that Sandig had before him.  But Scott had beaten Sandig to the table.

Adam hadn't visibly agonized over Scott's sentence, which made sense.  Not only was Scott not the first murderer to come onto Adam's plate as a possible death sentence, he was far less sympathetic than Sandig.  It was somewhat more difficult to feel hesitant about putting to death an unrepentant rapist-murderer with no real family and a violent history than it was to put to death a conservative, relatively law-abiding accountant with a wife and children.

Now Scott had been executed, and Claire wondered how that impacted on Adam.  Did it make an impact?  Was there anything left of the passionate, principled defense lawyer he had once been?  Or was that all in the past, twenty-five years ago, like his amicus brief?

DA 'Make a Deal' Schiff.  He also treated justice as a game, much like Jack, only for him the stakes were votes, not ego.  She'd thrown that in his face a few weeks ago over the case of James Smith, a homeless schizophrenic who had gone berserk and slaughtered three people and permanently maimed a fourth.

It had turned out that she'd pled Smith out for stalking a few months before with a slap on the wrist, and everything had hit the fan.  The press had had a field day with her lapse in judgment - it was easy to see, in hindsight, that Smith should never have been pled out.  Adam had been furious with her, in part because she'd caused him public embarrassment and in part because he didn't want her to use the DA's office to make up for her mistakes.  She had angrily defended herself, telling him "My mistake was following your lead, _Mr. Schiff_.  I cut a deal the way you like them - quick, cheap, and out the door."

Jack had sat helplessly looking from her to Adam while the two of them shouted at each other before Adam took her off the case and she stormed out.  She'd been furious with Adam and furious with herself, furious with the whole justice system.  She'd told Jack that she was starting to think they were on the Maginot line of the justice system, and it was wearing her down.  That she was doubting the whole system, that she was thinking of quitting.

And Jack had pulled her back.  He'd asked her to be his second chair on the case, defying Adam's express wishes.  He'd reminded her that she didn't have to apologize for being human and making an honest mistake, that she couldn't have foreseen Smith's future actions, that she had enough on her plate without feeling guilty about something that really wasn't her fault.  That she could still do good work, put Smith away so that at least he wouldn't do it again.  It had helped, but not resolved her conflict, her feelings of dissatisfaction and burnout.

How long had Jack been doing this?  How long had Adam?  No wonder they were cynical.  She felt burnt out after just a few years.

So burnt out, in fact, that she'd put in a job application at the U.S. Attorney's office.  She hadn't told Jack about it - in fact, they hadn't talked about her thoughts of quitting, not outright, since the Smith case.  She didn't even know how she felt about her application.  She wasn't sure what she wanted from a possible job change.  Was it just that she needed a change of pace?  Or would the U.S. Attorney's office be more of the same, just a different office?

Or did she just want to get away from Jack?

Or did she just want to get out from under Jack's shadow, professionally?  It was so hard to separate Jack from his job, separate their relationship as lovers from their relationship as coworkers.  Could what she and Jack had together survive their not working together?

For that matter, could it survive their working together, especially after the last few weeks?

**ooo000ooo**

Claire left the diner and wandered into a bookstore, rudderless and dissatisfied.  Today just wasn't working out.  She needed distraction, but she kept obsessing.  So she tried to talk things out, but that didn't work.  Nothing was working.  She wasn't connecting with people she wanted to connect with, wasn't resolving anything.

She suddenly thought of Jack, who had said he'd call her.  Went to a payphone and checked her messages.

"9:04 AM," said the tinny voice of her answering machine's time recorder, followed by a beep and a too-hearty male voice.  "Congratulations!  You have been selected as the winner of one of twelve very special prizes at Virgin Megastore! Simply press 1 for our fabulous prizes!" There was a long silence, followed by a beep.

Great, machines talking to machines.  She deleted the message.

"9:24AM," was followed by a hang-up.  She deleted it.

"9:56AM," the New York City Library telling her that the book on schizophrenia that she'd borrowed during the Smith case was overdue.  Right, she knew that.  She deleted it.

"1:06 PM.  Hey, Claire, it's me," Jack's voice.  "Look, I know you're taking the rest of the day, but I thought we could have dinner in tonight."  There was a pause.  "I just want to spend some time with you, and hours in the car to Attica and back last night doesn't count.  I'll bring the food and everything - just let me know when you want me to show up on your doorstep and I'll be there.  I'm meeting Liz Olivet for lunch, but then I should be back in the office later this afternoon.  Call me when you get this.  Love you."

Claire listened to it and left it on the machine.  No.  She couldn't call him right now.  Maybe later.  Right now the last thing she wanted was to go from Mac's lack of understanding and sympathy to Jack's. She'd listen to the message again later, when she was in a better frame of mind.

"2:14 PM." The U.S. Attorney's office, wanting her to come in for an interview.  Not knowing how she felt about that, she left it on the machine too.  She'd listen to it later and decide then whether to take down the contact information or not.

"2:36 PM.  It's me. Change of plans - I'm taking the rest of the day off.  Page me when you get in and we'll figure out the evening.  Bye."

Her eyebrows raised as she listened to the message, and left it on the machine too.  Jack was taking the rest of the day off?  That didn't sound like Jack.  At all.  She checked her watch, 2:40PM.

Maybe she should page him.  If there was some reason Jack was taking the day off, maybe they could talk about it.  Maybe he was feeling conflicted about the execution.  Maybe he was feeling bad about all the fighting they'd been doing, and wanted to make amends.  Maybe he wanted to apologize about treating her feelings so callously.

Maybe he just had a migraine and would be annoyed at her for bringing up irrelevant trivialities like her feelings about Scott's execution.  And the whole messy squabbling would begin again.

"End of messages," said the voice of her machine, and she hung up the phone.

Oh well.  Since nothing was working out mentally, maybe she could busy herself with things that could work out.  Her apartment was a mess.  She could clean it, bury herself in work that needed to be done but that she usually couldn't do.  She headed home.

**ooo000ooo**

Almost two hours later, she surveyed her work.

The apartment was spotless.  That was the nice thing about living alone and almost never being home: there really wasn't much to clean.  Once she'd done the dishes and wiped down the counters, done some laundry and picked up stray books and papers, the place looked like a hotel after the chambermaids had done up the room.

She didn't want to stay in a hotel.

It had been a nice break, though, and it was nice to be able to point to something she had accomplished.  She might feel no more comfortable with Scott's execution, her job, or her relationship with Jack, but at least she had a clean, tidy apartment.

And absolutely no wish to be there.

She glanced at her answering machine, with the message light still blinking.  She could call Jack.  She could call the U.S. Attorney's office.

No.

She picked up her overdue library book, "Understanding Schizophrenia".  What a horrible case.  What a horrible thing to live with.  The blood of those people was on her hands, and she hadn't even done anything bad - just her job.

Just her job.  One of the things that had disturbed her during the trial was that James Smith could have been a lawyer too.  There but for a quirk in neurochemistry go I, she'd thought as the trial progressed and he defended himself brilliantly, using all the skills he'd learned in law school and never had a chance to use before schizophrenia took over his life.  She'd read his closing statement and Jack was right, he could have hung the jury.  Instead, he was drugged and incarcerated, and she was free to practice law. Which she wasn't sure she wanted to do any more.  She wasn't sure she liked what practicing criminal law had done to her.

It had occurred to Claire before that her job was a little out of the ordinary.  She routinely dealt with death, violence, rape, all sorts of crimes and criminals.  Most people only saw that kind of thing on TV.  Was she hardened by it?  Was she a different person than she had been a few years ago?  Had her job changed her?

It definitely hardened many of the people in the system, cops and lawyers she dealt with who seemed immune to human emotions when it came to crime.  They could dispassionately talk about the most horrific things without flinching, and segue into a heated discussion of baseball in the next breath.  And that was good, that was how they kept themselves sane, but... sometimes it was hard to tell where to draw the line between sanity-preserving distance and callousness.

Even people she liked, like Lennie Briscoe, were somewhat callous.  He could make the most tasteless jokes about the most horrific situations, and the worst thing was, she sometimes found herself laughing.

And yet Lennie had a soft spot.  He was still capable of feeling emotions like sympathy, doubt, uncertainty, sorrow... he was far more thoughtful and intelligent than his gruff hardened old cop demeanor might suggest.  Claire wondered if Lennie spent time mulling over his job, wondering if his job hardened him, made him somehow less human.  What did he think about the execution now that he'd seen it?  How did he deal with his own role in the execution?

She suddenly wondered if the execution had made Lennie question his job as much as it had made Claire question hers.  After all, being a cop meant that your job had the potential to end a life even more directly than just sending a felon on his way to an executioner's table, or letting a dangerous schizophrenic off to kill three people.  How did Lennie deal with the fact that his job might some day call upon him to fire his weapon and kill a person?  Claire knew from Lennie's service record that Lennie had never fired his weapon at a perpetrator before, like most cops.  TV shows aside, most real cops went through an entire career without ever shooting their weapon.  But how did Lennie make his peace with the fact that some day he might have to?

OK, this was useless.  Her apartment was spotless and her thoughts weren't going anywhere.  She had to get out of here.

She decided to go see Lennie.

**ooo000ooo**

"Thank you," Anita Van Buren was paying a delivery person as Claire entered the squad room of the 27th Precinct.  She spotted Claire.  "Long day," she commented.

"Actually, I'm not on the clock.  I thought maybe Lennie..."

"Day off.  The man is scarce," she started towards her office and Claire trailed behind.  "Look, are you hungry?  'Cause I ordered the orange beef and the General Tso's.  This job, you'd think I'd be able to make up my mind.  Which one do you want?"

"I'm not really hungry," Claire said, disappointed.  So much for that.  This was just a great day.  Not connecting with anyone except people she didn't really want to connect with.

"Hey, you making any headway on that Fox thing?" Van Buren asked her, taking cartons of food out of the bag.

Fox - oh, right, Joey Fox, the Peeping Tom turned opportunistic rapist.  No, no progress.  "The wheels of justice grind slowly."  Suddenly she had a thought.  "Do you mind if I ask you a question?"

"Fire away."

"Why didn't you go up there today?"

Van Buren didn't have to ask what she was talking about.  "It's not part of my job."

"Why didn't I think of that," Claire said ruefully.  Did everybody think it was that simple?

"You know, Claire, if I thought I could get some kind of divine guidance by watching them run poison through that bum's veins, I woulda made the trip," Van Buren said.  She looked at Claire sympathetically.  "But the fact that you're here tells me my decision to stay away was the right one."

"That's not why I'm here," Claire protested, knowing that that was exactly why she was here but not willing to give any more ammunition to yet another person who would probably dismiss her feelings or tell her she was being silly or self-indulgent.

"Mmhm.  We all seek absolution in our own way," Van Buren said, her voice neutral.  She held out a pair of chopsticks.  "You sure you don't want a dumpling?" she asked invitingly.

Absolution.  A good word for what she was seeking today.  A way to make peace.  A way to live with herself.

A way to just spend a little while not feeling so churned up.  Claire smiled and gave in, taking the chopsticks.

**ooo000ooo**

Dinner had been a surprisingly nice, relaxed affair.  She and Anita had shared the Chinese food and not mentioned Scott or the execution or, surprisingly, anything about their jobs.  Anita had told her about her elder son, who was having difficulty reading, and Claire had told her about her dyslexic cousin who'd had a lot of trouble in school until a resource teacher tried putting transparent coloured overhead sheets on top of whatever he was reading.  Suddenly letters made sense, especially when he used red sheets, and he'd had a pair of glasses made up with flat red lenses.  Now everyone called him Elton, after Elton John's funky glasses, and he was enrolled at NYU as an English major.

Nothing to do with the law or crime or the execution.  There was life outside the criminal justice system after all.

When Anita was called away to oversee the interrogation of a suspect, Claire had decided, what the hell, catch up on some cases.  She'd looked through her notebook, trying to make some headway.  The Frunt case was going nowhere fast.  Their initial evidence had been thrown out and the defense was calling for dismissal.  There was a garbage collector who might have seen something but Briscoe and Curtis hadn't been able to catch him at home.  The Fox case was stalled, stalled, stalled.  She made a few calls and left a few messages with different labs and sources.

Anita came back in and phewed with relief.

"Well.  That was messy."

"What happened?"

"Animal rights activist.  His father doesn't want him to admit to anything, but he's convinced that he's right and some day the world will know he was some kind of hero.  He's trying to confess to stealing those animals and setting that lab on fire and his father's trying to shut him up," she chuckled and got out one of the cartons they hadn't finished before, munching some more.

"That reminds me of my introduction to the criminal justice system," Claire decided she wasn't quite full either and found another carton.  Anita really had ordered way too much food.

"Your first case?"

"My only case as a defendant."

"Counselor!" Anita grinned at her.  "A defendant?  Now this I have to hear.  Protesting?"  Claire nodded.  "Of course.  Somehow I didn't think you'd been in for hooking or drug dealing."

Claire smiled.  No, not drug dealing.  She'd been arrested for being a naïve, idealistic young kid.  "My friends and I were protesting the occupation of East Timor and I was arrested, no I'm not kidding, for trespassing and vandalism and obstruction of justice."

"Vandalism, Claire," Anita's eyes twinkled with amusement.

"So my father, who's seen me for Christmas and one week in the summer since my parent's divorce five years before, gets this frantic call from my mother.  He comes and tells me I have to plead innocent, not admit to anything.  He says there's not enough evidence to convict me and I have my future to think of.  Which went against my moral convictions, I wanted to be Rosa Parks and not deny anything."  Claire reflected as she spoke that it had been a long time since she'd been as sure of anything as she'd been sure of that protest.

"I can picture that.  You were how old?"

"Eighteen.  So my mother and my father are both sitting there, telling me what to do and say and agreeing with each other for the first time in my memory, and I'm just furious with them, especially because they keep reminding me that my father 'knows the law'," Claire explained to Anita's quizzical gaze, "He had one of these civil service jobs that allows you to perform legal duties in the area that you work in.  I think he worked in the Municipal Property office or something, to be honest I'd never paid much attention when he talked about his job."

"Everybody's a lawyer when their kid's in trouble," Anita commented.

"So we go down to the courthouse, and my parents are sitting there, together, which they haven't since I was about twelve, and I know I'm going to get off with a fine but they're convinced I'm going to jail - I was right, by the way, I had to pay 150 - and I just decided that I was old enough to make up my own mind and not listen to what some civil servant had to say, even if he did have a legal title."  She grinned at the memory of her poor father's face, and her own bravado, when she defied him.  She'd been so sure she was right, but so scared too.  Not of the sentence, but of her parents, who she knew were going to kill her when she ignored their advice.

"What was he anyway?"

"He was an Acting Justice of the Peace.  So the clerk calls my name, I stand up, and say, 'Guilty, Your Honor'."

"And justice for all," Anita chuckled.

Suddenly Claire's beeper went off.  "Damn."  She checked the pager screen and it indicated a voice message, and Jack's code.  "Hm.  I better take this in private," she said apologetically.

She went to a phone in a room that was usually used for witnesses or grieving families.  Dialed in her pager's number and code.  There was Jack's voice, with background noise that sounded like what... a bar?

"Hi Claire, I jus' left a message for you at home but I guess yer not there." There was a pause.  "I been leavin' messages for a while now, it would be really nice if you answered one of 'em.  Gimme a call, I 'ave my pager on, I'm at a bar called - hey, what's this place called?" Jack's voice lost volume as he went off the phone.  "Oh, it's called The Green Table," he went off-phone again, "Where is it?" There was a small pause, "An' it's on the corner of 12th and 36th."

Oh great, Jack was drunk at a bar.  She'd seen Jack drunk before and didn't have much patience for it.  Especially not today.  And what was that, 'I been leavin' messages for a while?'  That wasn't her problem.  Just because Jack McCoy decided he wanted to get together today was no reason for her to jump to.

She didn't let herself think about the fact that he'd sounded a little forlorn as well as annoyed at her as she returned to Anita's office.

"Who was that?"

"Uh... just some work related stuff."

"Problems with the... boss?" Anita asked neutrally.

Claire shrugged.  Anita pursed her lips.  "It's a delicate situation, isn't it?"  Claire glanced at her, took in her knowing gaze.  OK, so Anita had figured it out.  Most people who knew them probably had.

"It's been... it hasn't been easy lately."

"The execution hasn't helped, has it?"

"No, not really."

"I wouldn't think so."

"No."

"Claire, why did you go?  If you don't mind my asking."

"I don't know any more," Claire admitted.

"What did you think you'd get out of it?"

"I don't know.  I guess I wanted to be able to live with myself, to know that I didn't hide from the consequences of my actions."

"Why, did you ask for the death penalty?" Anita asked, a bit puzzled.

"No, actually, I'm against it.  It's always Jack's idea to ask for it in Murder One cases.  I argued against it."

"I thought so.  So how is it your fault?"

"Just because I didn't push for the death penalty doesn't mean I didn't have a hand in it.  I worked on the case.  I helped to gather the evidence and prepare the witnesses and file the motions and write the briefs... my hand killed him just as much as the hands of the men who actually turned the knobs."

"What are you supposed to do?  Excuse yourself from any cases where McCoy might ask for the death penalty?"

"I couldn't.  Not if I wanted to keep working in the DA's office.  You can't just selectively bow out of cases that don't sit well with you personally."

"So is that an option?"

"What?"

"Not working in the DA's office."  Claire looked at her for a moment.  Was it?

"Lieutenant?  We're gonna need your help on this," a detective Claire vaguely recognized as a new transferee to the 2-7 poked his head into Anita's office.

"Excuse me for a minute," Anita hurried out.

Is that an option.  Not working for the DA's office.  Well, frankly, it was.  She loved the job, but lately... she thought of her resume at the U.S. Attorney's office.  She didn't know what she wanted from that.  Would the U.S. Attorney's office be any different from the DA's?  Different enough to help this feeling of unease that she felt lately?

Did she even want it to be different?  Part of her felt eager for a new world, one that wasn't so complicated, but a lot of her was still drawn to this one despite its complications.  A new job would offer a change of scenery, and would get her away from Jack.  She just wasn't sure if she wanted that.

Once again she found herself thinking about Jack, her relationship with him.  Heaven and hell, all in one package.  Brilliant, driven, charming, sexy... opinionated, obsessive, cold, conflictive.

She found herself drawn to other people these days, just like she found herself drawn to other jobs.  Other people who seemed to promise a simpler life.  She'd done some work with a couple of detectives from Baltimore a few months ago and she'd felt quite attracted to the younger one.  So sweet, so interesting... so _nice_.  You could say a lot of good things about Jack, but _nice_ just wasn't one of them.

Tim Bayliss was nice, polite, her age, uncomplicated, came on a little too strong but in a totally adorable way... and she'd turned him down despite the interest she felt, because of a relationship she couldn't even acknowledge.  Not that she and Jack had much of a hope that nobody knew, but they didn't go advertising it.

She reflected, however, that while she'd liked Tim, she hadn't felt more than a passing regret at having to turn him down.  Still.  What if she was free to pursue another relationship?  With a nice guy?

Claire went back to her notes.  Pretending she was here to work, when really, she wanted to connect with somebody.  Somebody who wouldn't repel her as Mac had this morning, as Jack had all month.

**ooo000ooo**

An hour later, Anita was back.  Claire ignored the slight feeling of unease she felt at the fact that she was keeping Jack waiting for her.  She hadn't asked him to wait.  He could take a cab if he wanted.  Besides, she was feeling a bit better talking to Anita.

"This job," Anita sighed.  "Some days, I just wish I could go home and forget about the whole messy business."

"Yeah?"

"Oh yeah.  That detective?  I approved an arrest for a woman we thought killed her baby daughter.  She's been sitting in detention for two days, her two older kids are with a neighbour, and we just got back an ME's report that says that baby died of a heart condition."

"How did they miss that?"

"They didn't.  When Hovermayer called the ME, some idiot read him the wrong file.  There were two babies in that week, and one of them had cause unknown, possible SIDS, and the other one was this baby, heart failure."

"Oh my god."

"Yeah.  That poor woman, she's been worked over by interrogations and lawyers and god only knows what else... and her kid just died," Anita shook her head in regret, then seemed to shrug it off and said, "You wanna get a coffee?  Where were we anyway?"

Talking about my stupid Trespassing conviction, thought Claire as she followed Anita out.  Which wasn't what she wanted to talk about at all.  "How do you do it?" she blurted out.  "How do you keep this from getting to you?"

"How do you know it doesn't get to me?" They found Profaci had just started a new pot, and waited for the coffee to brew.

"You always seem so sure of yourself."

"It's the nature of the job, Claire.  You have to project confidence.  You have to be convinced you're right - willing to be proved wrong if necessary, but you can't be second guessing yourself all the time or you'll never get anything done."

"Hm."

"You've been second guessing yourself a lot lately, I take it."

"Yeah."

"This isn't just about Mickey Scott, is it?"

"No, I guess not."

"Smith still bothering you?" Anita asked perceptively.

"My actions caused three deaths."

"Your job was to do exactly what you did.  It's easy to say in hindsight that you made the wrong decision.  But if you got a case like that today, you'd do the exact same thing and you'd be right to do it."

Claire reflected that Anita had certainly changed her tune since the day they'd found out she was the one who pled Smith out.  Out of politeness, or a sense of perspective now that some time had passed?  "No, I wouldn't.  I would call the sister back and not assume she just wanted leniency for her brother."

Anita raised her eyebrows questioningly.

"Smith's sister.  She called me during the first case, when he was arrested for stalking.  She wanted to tell me that he was violent, that he needed to be hospitalized.  I assumed she wanted leniency and didn't bother to call her back."

"That's an expensive lesson to learn," Anita observed.

"Yes it is."

"And we all have lessons like that in our pasts."

"Those lessons can devastate people's lives," Claire said after a pause.

"Yes, they can.  Because we're human and we play a high stakes game to the best of our ability, and sometimes we lose."

"And you just shrug all of that off?"

"No."

"But you're comfortable with the responsibility."

"Not comfortable.  But I can handle it."

Claire reflected on that for a moment.  "I don't know if I can.  I feel like a fraud sometimes.  Like everyone else has a right to be here, making these decisions, and I don't."

"You think you're the only one that feels that way?  You think the rest of us always feel sure about what we're doing?"  Claire shrugged.  "We're just very good at pretending and convincing ourselves."

"So you do convince yourself?"

"Otherwise you find a new job.  You're not a superhero, you can't be right all the time.  You're gonna make mistakes and you just have to live with them."  Jack had said something pretty similar to her over Smith.

"And feeling like a fraud..." Anita smiled as she got out two mugs.  "I think most of us feel that way sometimes.  Especially women.  We're not brought up to be sure of ourselves, and you have to be in this job."  She paused thoughtfully as she poured herself a coffee.  "You know, you just have to realize that somebody has to do this job, and it might as well be you."

"You always seem so sure..." Claire said wistfully.

"Hell no.  Are you kidding?  I got the outside down OK but sometimes the inside's just shaking.  Just hoping I can pull it off and fool everybody else into thinking I know what I'm doing.  And I do."  She smiled nostalgically as she poured coffee for Claire.  "First day here, I was so nervous," she handed Claire her mug and started back to her office.  "Lennie comes in my office, and I can see on his face I am not what he expected, but he never said anything."

"But he was thinking it," she could just picture Lennie's face.  Probably a lot like how he'd looked the first time he'd met and taken orders from her.  OK, kiddo, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for now, but you better show me you know your ass from your elbow real fast.

Anita sat down.  "So he gives me the why's and the wherefores of some case.  I tell him what to do, and he does it.  Girl, I looked in the mirror and said Anita, you have arrived."  They shared a chuckle.

"And I thought it was just me."

"No, don't let the macho fool you.  It's everyone.  You know, we make decisions that affect people's lives, that's scary business. The only cure: don't talk about it."

Don't talk about it.  So what had they been doing all this time?  "Sometimes all the fighting... ludicrous judges, moronic lawyers..." Adam... Jack...

"... idiotic unies.  Please don't get me started about downtown."

"But the wheels keep grinding, eating up people on both sides of the aisle."

"And we're still here," Anita said firmly.

Claire thought for a moment.  "Yeah, I guess we are."  Still here.  Still doing good work, most of the time.  It wasn't ideal, it wasn't what she had imagined when she first became a prosecutor... but it was good work.

"You can't take all the blame, Counselor," Anita's face was compassionate.

"I'm not," she paused.  "It just sticks in my throat."

"Wanna get a drink or something?" Anita asked gently.  That sounded like a good idea.  Unfortunately...

"Oh, ah, no, I've already kept him waiting long enough."  She looked at Anita with gratitude.  "Thanks."  Anita smiled back.

**ooo000ooo**

Anita gathered up her things to go, thinking about Claire, thinking about Scott.  She'd been right.  Nothing could be gained by going to the execution.  Claire might have talked about James Smith, about her job, about the justice system, but underneath it all lay Mickey Scott.

She hoped that nobody else had been as disturbed by it as Claire.  Lennie had had the sense to take the day off, so he'd probably be OK despite looking somewhat off this morning.  He was generally pretty level-headed.  And McCoy had probably just gone right back to work and been OK too.  Nothing ever seemed to throw McCoy off for long.

Then again, she would have bet before this morning that Curtis would be OK too, but then he'd lost it over absolutely nothing with a little creep in the holding cell.  Not that Curtis was normally laid back - in fact, he let things get under his skin way too easily - but he'd seemed so unaffected by the execution when he first came in.  Oh well, hopefully he'd had a nice day with his family after she sent him home.

Oh - what was that?  Anita picked up a notebook, Claire's name on the cover.  She'd probably need this.  She called and left a message on Claire's machine, closed up her office and headed home.

**ooo000ooo**

Claire entered her apartment, pissed off as hell.  She'd gone to the corner Jack had mentioned on her pager message service, and it had turned out to be a used clothing store.  Nobody had ever heard of the bar.  She'd wasted an hour trying to be Jack's taxi service and possible alcohol detox service, and for nothing.  She glared at the blinking light on her answering machine and decided ignore it.  She didn't need to listen to Jack's voice on her machine, getting more and more intoxicated, waiting for her to come pick him up at a non-existent bar.  To hell with him.

She glanced at the schizophrenia book on the kitchen table.  Better put it next to the front door, remember to drop it off at the library tomorrow.

She held it for a moment, remembering Jack comforting her over her failure with Smith.  He'd asked her how many cases she'd had that week, how many felonies, how many plea bargains... and when she'd answered, proving his point that there was no way she could have known that doing just a bit more extra work would prevent disaster, he'd teased her gently, "Guess what?  You can't leap tall buildings either."

Jack could be sweet.  Not consistently, often not when she needed him to be, but there was a reason she was still with him.  A reason why she said no to the Tim Baylisses of the world.  She smiled, dismissing her anger at Jack for now, and took out her file on the Frunt case, looking for clues.  She knew there was something in here.  As she pored over Frunt's financial records, she thought over the conversations she'd had that day.

_Your job was to do exactly what you did._

Yes, it was.  A job that she did rather well.  Smith had been a failure, an expensive lesson to learn.  They all had failures like that.  Mistakes happened.  Jack had once put the wrong man in prison for killing several black youths, and the right man had, some years later, killed again.  That was on Jack's conscience, but he seemed to be able to live with it.  Could she?

_So is that an option?_

_What?_

_Not working in the DA's office._

Yes, it was an option.  She realized, though, that it was not an option she wanted to pursue right now.  She decided that when she listened to her messages, she'd delete the one from the U.S. Attorney's office.

_You can't take all the blame, Counselor._

No, she couldn't.

Scott was dead.  There was no getting away from that.  She suddenly realized she'd been thinking about Smith, thinking about Frunt, thinking about Fox, and not thinking much about Scott.  Not since she'd gone to see Mac and had wondered if he was right about her obsessing being self-indulgence.

_Since when is conviction a character flaw?_

_When it turns into self-congratulatory depression.  You can quit the profession, Claire.  You just can't quit the human race._

Mac was right.  Decisions, death, crime, even the death penalty - that was all part of life.  In another profession she might not have to deal with them, but that wouldn't make them less real.  Mickey Scott would have been no less dead today if another ADA had helped to convict him, would have been no less dead if she hadn't witnessed his death.

The fact was, life went on.  Mickey Scott was dead.  Adele Saunders' parents were at peace, or thought they were.  James Smith was in a hospital for the criminally insane.  Reva Frunt still needed justice and Joey Fox still had to be convicted.  There were still criminals to put away, justice to be served.  Not as clean or as pure as she'd thought before she started working at the DA's office, but justice of a sort nonetheless.

As for the death penalty... in her profession, in her position, she could work to get rid of it or at least try to exert her influence over people like Jack and Adam so that they didn't ask for it with every Murder One case.  They valued her opinion.  Jack valued her opinion.  And he valued her, as a person and as a lawyer.

All of a sudden she wondered if he was still waiting for her.  Decided she may as well try to see - she wasn't going to get to sleep any time soon, but it wasn't from brooding any more, it was just from the residue of a long day of ruminating and making some pretty major decisions, many of them involving Jack.  Funny that on a day when she'd spent so much time thinking about him, he'd probably spent a lot of it thinking she was ignoring him.

She went to her answering machine, then realized that she didn't want to listen to it, didn't want to get angry at him again if he'd left more messages for her whining that she was leaving him waiting.  May as well just go to The Green Table and see if he was here.

She realized that part of why she didn't want to get mad at Jack for whining was that she knew she would deserve any whine he threw her way.  Jack deserved better than this from her.  No matter what her difficulties with him, she shouldn't act childish and stand him up, especially all day.  Especially since he'd sounded like he wanted to talk to her.  Not just debate, but connect with her.

She paged him and waited for him to answer.  Called his number at home - no answer there either.

She sighed.  OK, turnabout is fair play, she thought.  What was the name of the bar?  The Green Table.  She got out the phone book - oh, there, The Green Table, at 12th and 26th.  Not 12th and 36th like Jack said.  That wasn't too far from her home, actually.

**ooo000ooo**

At last.  She'd found the seedy bar, but no Jack.  Well, it had been some time.  Still, he could have paged her to let her know he was leaving.

Then again, she could have paged him at any point during the day to let him know she was deliberately ignoring him.  She supposed they were even.  They'd talk about it tomorrow, after Jack recovered from the hangover she was sure he'd earned, if his voice on her pager was any indicator of how much he'd had to drink.

Maybe he was at a pool table.  Did Jack play pool?  She had no idea.  She really didn't know what he did with his spare time other than be with her.  He'd mentioned going to the gym a few times, but other than that...

Oh now that was interesting.  Jack wasn't at the pool table, but Lennie Briscoe was.  Playing pool, which she knew he did extremely well - she'd seen him play when they had that case in Baltimore a few months back.

"Too much time on your hands," a heavyset middle-aged man was saying to Lennie.

"Yeah, too much time, not enough time," Lennie went to set up a shot, and sang a short burst, "'Tis I'll be there-'" he spotted Claire.  "Whoa, looka' this!"

Oh my God.  Lennie was drunk.  She felt sinking sympathy.  She knew, of course, everybody knew, that Lennie Briscoe was a recovering alcoholic.  He hadn't had a drink in years.  And here he was, completely drunk.  "You've been drinking," she stated.

He slapped the pool table.  "That's what's causing this!" He threw the stick down onto the table in mock anger.

"This your kid?" asked the heavyset man.

Lennie smiled.  "Aah, let's see.  Do you hate my guts?" he peered at her earnestly.  What?  "I guess not." He smiled again and took a sip of his drink.

"Jack called me."

"Jack.  Jack turned into a pumpkin.  Can I buy you a drink, Counselor?"

"No thanks," oh, Lennie.  Lennie focused his eyes on her blearily.

"Oh - OK, I got one for you," he sat on the edge of the pool table.  "How come California has the most lawyers, an' New Jersey has the most toxic dumps?"

"Because New Jersey got first pick," she answered him.  Poor Lennie.  Her heart felt heavy for his sake.  Here was this good, decent man, reduced to drunken incoherence.

"You don't get it," he smiled ruefully at her.

OK.  Jack was obviously gone, but she'd be damned if she was going to let Lennie continue to kill his liver out here.  He didn't deserve this.  She took a hold of his arm and said gently, "Look, why don't you get your coat, and I'll drive you home."

**ooo000ooo**

"Home, James," Lennie leaned his head back in her car.

"Where to?"

"I use' ta know," he said woozily, chuckling.

She looked at him in concern.  So this was what he'd done today.  "So this morning really bummed you out?"

"Do I look bummed out to you?" Lennie asked good-naturedly.  No, you look drunk, she thought.  That's going to make you pretty bummed out tomorrow, I'm sure.

"You know, it wouldn't be so terrible," Lennie mused.

"What's that?"

"If you were my kid," he told her.  What?  This was part of why she didn't like it when Jack drank.  A conversation with a drunk was so hard to follow.  Although Lennie was a lot more cheerful than Jack when he got drunk.  Jack tended towards belligerence.

"I guess I should take that as a compliment," Claire replied with a smile after a moment.

"Hey, yer smart, yer pretty, you got a good job, _and_ you don't hate my guts," he told her.  What had happened to him today?  Did he have a run-in with his daughter as well as watch an execution?

"Lennie, I doubt your daughter hates you," she reassured him.  Not the Lennie she knew, who had a caustic wit but a good heart.  Nobody could hate Lennie - dislike him for his tactless comments perhaps, but not hate him.

"Oh-ho, no, you don't know 'er, you don't know 'er," Lennie said.  "I don' even know 'er."  He paused for a moment.  "I never will, I never will," his voice dropped to a near-whisper and Claire glanced at him in concern.  That was a lot of pain.  She hoped he'd be OK - and then she heard a horn blasting and a bright light blinded her and


	3. Eulogy

**CHAPTER 3: EULOGY**

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, my name is Alana Hysell and on behalf of Claire Kincaid's family I would like to welcome you to the Ginghampton Funeral home today.

Claire's family has asked me to say a few words about Claire.  Following the eulogy, Claire's friend Marian Adams will play a few pieces of music that Claire loved, and then there will be a reception in the Marley room.  Claire's family has asked me to remind you all that in lieu of flowers, if anybody wishes to show their respects to Claire they may do so by donating to the Manhattan Battered Women's Shelter.

(small pause)

We all like to think well of the dead.  In this profession, we often come across people who are eulogized in death and whose lives are whitewashed to an extent that makes them unrecognizable to those left behind.  And those of us who try to find out a little bit about the deceased become rather cynical, used to hearing the half-truths, the little sidesteps of the real person in an effort to make them seem like saints.

But what has come through in my talks with those who were close to her is that there is no need to whitewash Claire Kincaid's life.  She was a genuinely good person.  She was dedicated, idealistic, caring.  She strove to do what was right, to make the world a better place for her having been in it.  She graduated near the top of her class from Harvard law school, she could have taken any number of high-paying jobs with any number of law firms... but instead she chose to dedicate herself to represent the people, and bring to justice those who committed crimes.  Not as high-paying.  Not as glamorous.  Not as easy.  But that wasn't what Claire wanted; she wanted to make a difference, and she did.

And she didn't just stop there.  She wasn't afraid to disagree with her superiors when she thought they were wrong.  She wasn't afraid to stand up for herself, for what she believed in.  She wasn't even afraid to question herself, to challenge herself, when she felt conflicted in her own beliefs.

On the last day of her life, Claire Kincaid witnessed an execution.  She went because she felt she had an obligation to do so.  She had helped to convict a man, helped to bring him to the executioner's table, and she felt she had to witness for herself what her actions had helped to bring about.  And this in spite of the fact that Claire didn't agree with the death penalty, that she had argued against it, that if she had had a choice that man would not have been executed.

That was Claire.  She didn't hide from anything, didn't avoid anything.  She faced it, examined it, dealt with it.  Socrates once said that an unexamined life is not worth living.  Claire Kincaid's life was worth living.  Until the very last day of her life, she was thinking about what was fair, what was right, and what her role was to ensure that the right thing happened.

The world needs more people like Claire Kincaid.  She will be sorely missed, not only for her warmth and her caring, but for her courage and conviction.  She will be missed, not only by her friends and family, but by all of those people in this world who need someone like her to fight for their rights, for justice, for a better world.

(pause)

Now we will hear from Ms. Adams.

**ooo000ooo**

**Author's Notes:** BTW, the answering machine messages aren't canon, they're from Kyllikki's awesome fic, _Deus Ex Machina_.  I liked it so much I just had to refer to it, with permission of course :)

If anybody wants the actual script for Aftershock, e-mail me at

ciroccoj2002 at yahoo dot com


End file.
